24 hours with Occupy Detroit: Occupy Detroit: In defense of capitalism... (part one of two)

It’s hard to ignore that a sizable number of Occupy Detroit protesters are at least sympathetic to socialism.

There are actual members of the Industrial Workers of the World here. Some of whom were born after Warren Beatty’s film “Reds” was in theaters. That’s surprising because who knew the Wobblies made it much past the Prohibition era?

I guess I can kind of understand the fascination with socialism, to an extent. If nothing else, Che on his motorcycle is a romantic image.

But I have clear memories of the Berlin Wall and the Eastern Bloc falling over those amazing 60 days at the end of 1989. Socialism is no panacea. I’ll take Vaclav Havel and the Velvet Revolution over Lenin and the October Revolution, any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

The United States in large part won World War II because the American industrial system, given over to the service of the nation, could simultaneously out-produce Germany and Japan. The Soviet Union won World War II because the Nazis froze outside Stalingrad.

24 HOURS WITH OCCUPY DETROIT

MLive's Jeff Wattrick goes inside Occupy Detroit for 24 hours, sharing his observations and insights as he fights the cold with a group fighting to be heard.

Capitalism works because no economic system is more agile or efficient. But to sustain itself over the long-term it needs to be a free market that provides real opportunities for the most. A generation of stagnant middle class salaries suggests the present system has gone off the rails, and needs to be tweaked.

Until Ayn Rand fans build their magic invisible canyon to house the so-called 1%, it’s in their long-term best interest to help fully pay for the transportation system that moves their goods to market and moves the market to their goods, the schools that educate their workers, and the military that defends the nation from exterior threats. It’s also in their long-term best interest to constrain their enterprise so that it doesn’t negatively impact the health and safety of others.